Starts With A Bang podcast

Over the past 30 years, we've gone from zero exoplanets to thousands. With each new generation of telescopes, observatories, and scientists, we build upon our previous finds to make enormous advances that go beyond what any one person could ever produce. The ESA's Gaia mission has surveyed more than a billion stars, identifying the closest ones that would make potentially great targets for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, if they had potentially habitable planets around them. NASA's TESS is doing the preliminary work of observing these stars, most of which are red dwarf (M-class) stars, to find which ones actually have interesting planets that transit across their parent star's face. So far, we've found some fascinating candidates, some of which just might be humanity's first discovery of biosignatures beyond our Solar System if we get lucky. This month, we're so fortunate to be joined by astronomer and TESS scientist Emily Gilbert, a Ph.D. candidate who specializes in exoplanets. (And who has the delightful Twitter handle: @EmDwarf.) Come learn where we are, what we know, and where this rapidly evolving scientific field is headed today! (Image credit: ENGELMANN-SUISSA ET AL.NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER)

It was only back in the early 2000s that scientists were struggling to identify and weigh the small number of supermassive black holes that we'd been able to identify in the known Universe, but the past 15-20 years have led to a revolution in what we know about them. We've identified tens of thousands of active galaxies, pinned down the masses of some of the closest ones to us through a variety of techniques, and even observed the event horizon of our first black hole directly. These powerful advances were mainly enabled by superior observatories and instruments, and the spectacular Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA) of telescopes, which was indispensible to measuring the mass and imaging the event horizon at the core of the largest massive galaxy in our neighborhood: M87. I'm so pleased to welcome astronomer and Ph.D. Candidate Kyle Kabasares onto the show, where we talk about black holes, mass measurements, ALMA, and the future of black hole-related astronomy! Kyle is also passionate about science outreach, and you can check out his YouTube channel here. (Image credit: EHT Collaboration; acknowledgement: ESO)

When most of us think of astronomy, we think about two types of scientists: the observers who point their telescopes at the sky and collect data, and the theorists who put together the physical rules of the Universe to both make critical predictions for what those observational results ought to yield and to interpret the data that comes in. But in reality, there are other important types of astronomers that we don't talk about frequently: analysts who focus on dealing with these literally astronomical data sets and the people who work on (and with) the instrumentation itself. This includes telescope and instrument builders, telescope operators and system specialists, and many other vital roles. Additionally, the science of astronomy isn't just about the science itself, but also questions important for the interplay of science and society. Whose land are these telescopes on? What does responsible stewardship look like? Who has access to these facilities, and who has equal (and unequal) access to the career paths of becoming a scientist? I'm so pleased to have astronomer Jess Schonhut-Stasik on the show, for a wide-ranging discussion about astronomy, from instruments to injustices and how the big questions about science and society are creating not only incredible dilemmas for astronomy, but an incredible opportunity to get things right. Have a listen today, and check out the fabulous Mauna Kea Scholars program that she's involved with here: https://maunakeascholars.com (With permission, her email address associated with inquiries about the program is here: j.stasik@ukirt.hawaii.edu) [Image credit: UKIRT / University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy]

When we look out at the Universe today, we see that it's full of stars and galaxies. And yet, we can only see those stars and galaxies because the space between those galaxies and ourselves doesn't block that starlight before it gets to our instruments, observatories, telescopes, and eyes. But early on, that's an enormous problem: there is light-blocking gas and dust, and the record-holder for most distant galaxy ever discovered is still not a pristine, first-generation galaxy at all. But there are new observatories and cutting-edge techniques that will reveal them, teaching us how the Universe grew up: from a collection of neutral atoms with no stars and galaxies at all to the structure-rich Universe we see today. Joining me on this special, bonus edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast (because don't we all need a bonus?) is extragalactic astronomer and PhD candidate Rebecca Larson from the University of Texas - Austin, in a rich conversation that takes us all the way back to the edge of the Universe as we can observe it. Find out what lies at, and perhaps beyond, our current cosmic frontiers! (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Kang (STScI))

When we look out at the galaxies in the Universe, almost all of them have supermassive black holes at their centers: millions or even many billions of times more massive than our Sun is. Most of the time, these black holes are relatively quiet, but every so often, a black hole can be spotted emitting enormous amounts of radiation over a large range of the electromagnetic spectrum. These "active galaxies" come in many different flavors, from blazars to AGNs to quasars and many others, but they're very closely tied to both the age of the Universe and how rapidly a galaxy forms stars. There's an awful lot that we've learned about these objects, and yet, still so many more mysteries to solve and uncover. This month, as the first of two podcasts, I'm so pleased to bring PhD candidate Alyssa Sokol, from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, onto the program, as we enjoy a far-reaching conversation that takes us beyond the limits of what we know. (Image credit: X-ray - NASA, CXC, R.Kraft (CfA), et al.; Radio - NSF, VLA, M.Hardcastle (U Hertfordshire) et al.; Optical - ESO, M.Rejkuba (ESO-Garching) et al.)

When it comes to gravitational waves, our terrestrial laser interferometers have provided us with unparalleled success in terms of direct detection. But they have some strong fundamental limits: their laser arms are short; their sensitivity is limited to low-mass, small-radius objects; the signals they detect last for mere seconds, at most. Most importantly, seismic noise, and even the fact that we live on a planet with tectonic plates, place restrictions on how sensitive we'll ever be able to get. But in space, all of these stories change dramatically, and the upcoming European Space Agency mission LISA is aiming to open up our eyes to a realm of gravitational wave astronomy like we've never experienced before. On this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast, we're joined by Dr. Ira Thorpe of NASA as we explore the future of gravitational wave astronomy in an entirely new realm: in space! (Image credit: EADS ASTRIUM)

Even today, the Universe is forming enormous numbers of new stars: from various nebulae throughout our galaxy to mighty starburst galaxies where the entire galaxy is an enormous star-forming region. A decade ago, we were still trying to figure out how, when, and where stars formed throughout the Universe; today, we have that nailed down, but a whole suite of new questions and puzzles have arisen as a result of what we learned. On this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast, I'm pleased to welcome Indiana University astronomer Jennifer Sieben to the show, who specializes in the Universe's star-formation history and also works in astronomy outreach. She has a YouTube channel with astronomy vlogs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNgwz85_GjP_t2_HhUQ7BFj_S189sOPz1 Serves as her University's outreach coordinator for astronomy and is co-Editor-at-Large for a science blog: blogs.iu.edu/sciu/ And can be found here on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARDISeeker Come enjoy the spectacular story of the Universe's newborn stars today! (Image credit: A Feild / STScI, 2002)

Dark matter is often thought of as the glue that holds the Universe together. With five times as much gravity due to this unseen form of matter as compared to normal, atom-based matter, it affects how galaxies and giant large-scale structures form in a tremendous, truly epic way. But depending on what the properties of dark matter actually are, we should get a very different Universe on smaller scales. Is dark matter cold? Warm? Hot? And does it interact with itself, or is it truly invisible? Thanks to a fascinating new technique, we're learning more about this than ever before. Take a listen as we invite Dr. Anna Nierenberg onto the podcast to talk about how gravitational lensing is revealing dark matter substructure as never before, and how it might reveal these elusive properties of dark matter at long last as a result. (Additional information: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/01/10/eight-new-quadruple-lenses-arent-just-gorgeous-they-reveal-dark-matters-temperature/ ) (Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. NIERENBERG (JPL), AND T. TREU AND D. GILMAN (UCLA))

When you look up at the sky, most of the points of light we see appear to be fixed. On night-to-night timescales, the distant stars and galaxies, with the exception of a few notable variables, appear to be relatively unchanged. But every once in a while, a spectacular event will occur, giving off a transient signal that outshines a typical star's brightness by factors of many billions. These events fall into many classes: supernovae, gamma ray bursts, and even more exotic events, and part of the fun is uncovering exactly what's going on as we discover these new classes of objects for the first time. Scientist Anna Ho, PhD candidate at Caltech, is right on the cutting edge of that frontier, and brings us an insider's look at this exciting and rapidly evolving field. Come get the latest on what we know and what we're still learning about the cataclysmic deaths of stars! (Image credit: Bill Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF))

One of the great challenges for astronomy is to determine, in gory detail, how stars are formed from a mere cloud of molecular gas and dust. Although the general picture is simple, where gravitational collapse leads to protostars that ignite nuclear fusion in their cores, the actual environments where these stars are born have many competing factors at play. Gravitational collapse is only one of them, joined by thermal heating and radiative cooling, magnetic fields and hydrodynamics, as well as stellar winds, ultraviolet radiation, and feedback from a variety of sources. Here to help us disentangle what's important, where, and when is Ph.D. candidate Mike Chen, an astrophysicist specialized in the formation of stars at the University of Victoria. If you've ever wondered how we actually form stars in our Universe, this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast is for you! (Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration.)